well, when we get all our dev environment stuff together, at least one of us will try at LEAST rebuilding for the newer Symbian phones.. I use a Nokia N70, and with a few little quirks here and there, it works pretty well.

The Nokia N70 is not an UIQ phone but Series60 wich should be well supported by LinuxMCE. (AFAIK?)

However i know that UIQ has a conversion tool to convert applications between different versions of symbian and uiq, but to use that tool requires some dev skills and the source code for the application.

Just some background - UIQ and Series60 are two different user interfaces that both run on the Symbian operating system. They are quite different, especially in terms of user interfacing. UIQ is a touch based interface for starters.

There is currently no support for UIQ and only support for older versions of Series60.

To my knowledge noone is doing the port to UIQ.

I have been tempted to give it a go as I have a Motorola a925 sitting at home which is no longer used as a phone but could make quite a reasonable mobile orbiter. Just havn't had the motivation/time to follow through with it.

There was some comments on the old Pluto forums some time ago that UIQ would make an inferior mobile orbiter due to screen constraints and lack of controls - but in my opinion most UIQ phones I have seen would be perfect and better than the nokia series60 phones.

I have not built a Symbian app (apart from some messing around some time ago) but imagine it would not be too hard as I seem to remember coming across a porting guide from Series60->UIQ some time ago. I think it was on a Sony website somewhere.

When I get some time I may have a go at this but I certainly cannot commit much to it (in fact I have not had a chance to do anything in linuxMCE for about three weeks now). If someone else has a go at it I will certainly try and give a hand - even if this is limited to testing on the Motorola phone.

I'm also very interested in a orbiter for uiq3. I've got a Sony Ericsson p1i (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Ericsson_P1) which is essentially an upgrade of m600i with a 3.2mpix camera and 802.11b WLAN. There is even a voip client so it should be possible to integrate with asterisk as well.

Both the m600i and p1i have a qwerty keyboard and jog-dial on the side, so lack of controls shouldn't be an issue at all.

I don't know nearly enough about programming to port or assist in porting from s60 to UIQ2/3 (except perhaps testing and bug reporting), but If someone without a UIQ2/3 phone is interested in porting (and getting a free phone , I can donate my m600i (UIQ3) and an old motorola a925 with (UIQ2), as I don't use them anymore. They're both operator locked so they wouldn't be of much use beyond development, but if anyone wants them let me know.

I am also willing to donate my time in the form of testing on the UIQ3 phone. I have a Sony Ericsson P990i so hopefully that will provide a usefull bit of feedback. I do still use the phone though so I can't send it off anywhere.I did look at getting into Symbian programming but the structure of the OS and the interfaces just scared me off

I believe the Nokia E61i is also a s60 v3 phone which may or may not be supported yet, I'm looking at getting one of these so I'd be happy to help test as well, especially interested in the VoIP/SIP possibilities of the built in wifi. Not precisely UIQ related, but figured I'd chime in here.

I would love to see this.I am starting to build a new server for LinuxMCE. I have a P1i, M600i and P910 lying around for use as orbiters so if we could get UIQ preferably UIQ 3 working that would be fantastic. I would certainly be able to help withbug testing and the like.

The M600i and P910 have bluetooth but no wifi, the P1i has 802.11b and bluetooth

The Symbian Foundation is in the process of being formed with a stated objective of unifying the Symbian UIs under a single platform based on S60v3 although with touchscreen support based on UIQ... so that could be interesting but is also at least 2 years away. In the meantime all Symbian software will become opensource and royalty free even for commercial use. Hopefully this will increase the number of phones using UIQ, as it is a good interface and is the basis for a lot of phones.. from Samsung, SonyEricsson (P series and many walkman series phones), Motorola, LG, Benq, and Siemens among others.